The Blindboy Podcast - Emma Dabiri

Episode Date: June 28, 2019

Emma is an academic who focuses on African Studies. We chat about her bestselling book "Don't Touch My Hair" Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello you feathered custard doves with your sticky confectionery wings. What's going on? Hold on, I'm getting texts already and it's only the start of the fucking podcast. Alright, welcome to episode 87 of the Blind Boy Podcast. This week is a very intense week for me. I'm rounding up and finishing my book. I'm out of the country also and so I'm going to have a live podcast for you this week but it's a live I recorded about six months ago and I've been wanting to put this one out for ages but I promised I wouldn't I

promised I was going to hold on to it for a specific date and then put it out. Fantastic feedback for last week's podcast. It was about biodiversity and the climate and, you know, direct action that we can do. So I got a great response online, in particular to the call for action for people to make the fucking seed bombs with wildflower you know getting irish wildflower and making little bombs out of clay and compost and wild irish flower and making these little balls and throwing them into vacant lots or someone's unkempt garden or ghost estates a lot of people sending me photographs of themselves making seed bombs and spreading wildflower around ireland i encourage you do this it will help the bees um so anyway this week's podcast it's a live podcast from vicar street that i recorded about

six months ago with emma dabbery who is she's an academic right and she specializes an academic who specializes on issues of race she teaches african study african history and what i enjoyed most about emma is that yes she's an academic but she communicates academia through storytelling and she has a good ability to communicate knowledge in such a way that it's it's not it doesn't exclude you in the way that academia does because academic stuff sometimes can just feel highfalutin but emma has that rare ability to just make it really relatable and interesting and you're learning but you want to hear what happens next so we had a great fucking chat in vicar street the reason i'm putting it out now is at the start of this month emma released

her book which was called don't touch My Hair which is it's a history of African hair and African hairstyles and I said to Emma look you're going to put it out at the start of May I guarantee you there'll be loads of press so I'll put this out in June essentially because by that time the press will have calmed down and you'll get kind of a second leg. To be honest, she doesn't even fucking need it. The book came out at the start of May and it immediately went to the top of the Amazon bestseller. The fucking Guardian called it groundbreaking and her book may possibly be remembered next year

as one of the best books of 2019. The critical reception to it is fucking huge all over the world so fair fucking play to you Emma it's a class book go out and get it it's called Don't Touch My Hair

and the subject of this podcast is going to be about most of the things that Emma wrote about in that book about Africa African culture this podcast is going to be about most of the things that Emma wrote about in that book, about Africa African culture the difference

between different African culture and the significance of hair and music within African culture so give it a listen and you will enjoy, before I go into it we do a little ocarina pause what are we

four minutes in we can chance a fucking ocarina pause at four minutes can't we alright Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league bar none. Tickets are on sale now

for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason

game. And you'll only pay as we play, come along for the ride and punch your ticket to rock city at Toronto rock.com. That was the Ocarina pause. You might've heard an advert for something. This podcast is sponsored by you. The via the patreon page do you enjoy the podcast if you do consider becoming a patreon a patron patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast if you like the podcast you can support it by giving me the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month all right um that makes a massive difference to my life it what it's what keeps me doing the podcast

every fucking week to be honest like i shouldn't even be putting out a podcast this week or next week because i'm too busy for it but because of the patrons it's like i'm not letting you down you're getting a podcast every fucking week regardless of my personal circumstances or what my workload is so you can thank the patrons for why there is a podcast this week so thank you so without further ado here is my live podcast with emma dabbery in Vicar Street. And it's great crack and it's very, very interesting. And it was a pleasure for me to learn a bunch of stuff that I never knew anything about.

So, yart. What's the crack, Emma? How are you getting on? Yeah, I'm grand. Was that the right introduction? You're an academic who specialises in issues of race. I think that was it in a nutshell. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. We could say a bit more, but I'm sure that will reveal itself over the course of the evening.

So you've just written a book called Don't Touch My Hair. Is that funny? Is the title funny? With the questions that I ask, I ask the internet for the questions, right? So in order to introduce this book, I'm going to ask a particularly ignorant question that I was asked on the internet. Now, I don't know if he was being genuinely ignorant or mean,

but what did he say? Sometimes I feel like I don't really care about intention. It's just like, regardless of what his intention was, the question might be exhausting. But let's hear it anyway. Do you know what? I should have planned this better because I didn't number my questions. Bollocks, where is it?

Was he questioning the title? Like, the veracity of the claim? The gist of it was, right? Why did she call her book Don't Touch My Hair? That seems really strange. Why would someone go around touching people's hair? Like, I can understand it would happen, but, like, why would you write a book about it?

I mean, okay, yeah, that is a fair enough question. Oh, wow, this is loud. So I will say the title is a phrase that a lot of black women will be familiar with because it's something that they will, especially if they've grown up in a white environment the phenomenon of the unwarranted unauthorized hair touching is probably something that they've experienced and i guess the phrase was popularized um by solange knowles when she

she has a song called don't touch my hair yeah um it's a it's it's a it's a real thing. I guess if you're somebody that has no experience of such a thing, it may seem odd, because it is odd. It is a strange thing to do to somebody. But I think I saw that little exchange on Twitter. And I think the question itself is kind of innocent enough. But I think then when people kind of went on to say you know this is like a thing this happens he was just like no no no it sounds very unlikely like I don't believe it so I think when people especially like when black people tell you kind of en masse that they're experiencing something just because you have no direct experience of it yourself it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist

or that it doesn't happen. So, yeah. And, like, a phrase like, don't touch my hair, like, it's one of those things, it triggers the internet. Everything triggers the internet. But it's people... Like, we were raised... Racism is basically how I was raised

don't openly hate black people and don't use the n-word and that was it and if you don't do that you're not a racist yeah yeah if only it were that simple the hair touching thing is

is it fair to call that a microaggression ah yeah I mean I feel like I'm a generation The hair touching thing, is it fair to call that a microaggression? Ah, yeah. I mean, I feel like I'm a generation that terms like microaggression don't necessarily come really easily to me. And I don't even know if it's micro. But I will say that growing up, it was a really frequent occurrence in my life. I didn't know that it happened to other people. I didn't know it was like an international

kind of global phenomenon. And it was only, I guess, when these conversations started, well, when I kind of left Ireland and met other black people. So the Ireland I grew up in was like in the 80s and 90s. And it's very different to now. Like they're just, especially in the early 90s,

like kind of migration hadn't started in the way it kind of happened subsequently. You were growing up in Rialto, wasn't it? I grew up in Rialto, yeah. Yeah. And I, like if I saw another black person, like it often felt like something of an event. Like it just wasn't,

like it just wasn't typical. So it was only when I left Ireland kind of started to meet more black people and then also with conversations that have been happening on the internet I saw that this thing that I thought that was a really unique experience of mine has absolutely has actually happened to like millions of girls not just girls actually it happens to men as well and like particularly if they have locks if they if they have like if they have locks that seems to seems to attract um that kind of attention but yeah it happens it happens a lot and um so when I was little I would literally just have people um they wouldn't even like look really at me or talk to me

they'd literally just be like Jesus look at her hair and they'd come over and they'd touch my hair and kind of talk about it amongst themselves so it was quite disorienting And how do you feel like what has the internet done for those type of conversations? To have things like that spoken about do you think the internet has created

this conversation or was this something that was already happening in smaller communities and now all of a sudden everyone can talk about it it's definitely something that that's already happening but i guess the internet provided that kind of that space um or and that um i guess like access um for people who wouldn't have been able to be in communication with each other previously to kind of connect over shared experiences and across kind of like geographical spaces

and stuff and I guess when there's kind of a ground swell of those conversations and you start to see like the numbers of people who've experienced the same type of thing as you, I guess the kind of mainstream starts to pay attention and they're like oh wow this is a thing like it's happening to a lot of people. Yeah.

And how do you feel? Because this is the thing we were talking about now, when you write a book, you don't get to choose the name of your book. Yeah, so I didn't choose the title. How do you feel about the title of the book? And does it correctly reflect what's on the inside? Yeah, an interesting question. So I'm happy with the title.

yeah an interesting question so i'm i'm happy with the title um and i think it's good it's good to have like a populist title that a lot of people can like immediately identify with um and i guess that makes other people maybe it's i don't know if it's a sensationalist title but it's like a recognizable title and it's like a populist it's not the one i came up with i came up with a far more staid what was it what was it a history of hair so but the abstract of the book is taking african is it deconstructing african hairstyles as a way to decolonize um yeah okay so can you talk about that the like Yeah, okay, so... Can you talk about that, the African hair and decolonization?

Wow, okay, yeah. That's what I want to hear about. Okay, it's quite complicated, but let me try and explain that. Okay, so basically, I teach African studies and African history it can one of the many things

that was used to justify first of all like the enslavement of millions of Africans and subsequently after slavery was abolished the colonization of the continent was that these people aren't

really people. They're not fully human. So not only is this kind of, not only is their colonization kind of not a problem, but it's actually, it's a benefit to them. We're bringing, like, the light of civilization to the dark continent, and they should be grateful, in fact, that this is happening. Lots of different... So if you think about the idea... This is going to be kind of a long and meandering answer. It's a podcast, it's great. Great.

And you did tell me to be as nerdy as possible, so it might go deep. So race, people often say, people have started to say, and I think this has been facilitated by the internet, phrases from sociology being kind of used in a populist way from people who aren't academics, this idea that race is a social construct. So people kind of repeat this mantra, but I don't know if they really know what it means. And a lot of people's reactions to things about race would suggest to me that even though they're saying race is a social construct, they do still actually believe it's a biological reality. But lots of the ideas and stereotypes,

given that race is a social construct, lots of the ideas and stereotypes that we believe about blackness were invented when this concept of black people was invented. And equally with this idea of there being black... So it's not to say that people with darker skin didn't exist, that they were invented. There were always people to say that um people with darker skin didn't exist that they were invented there were always people that had like darker skin dark brown skin but the idea

that they were a unified race and that they had particular racial characteristics that they all shared in common is a relatively recent socially engineered idea similarly with white people there was no kind of pan white identity identity before the 1600s people across europe wouldn't have seen themselves or in america well america was kind of was being discovered at this point but they wouldn't have had this idea of themselves as white and their being kind of meaning encoded into that and their being a shared identity by virtue of their lack of melanin, their complexion. So when these things, when these ideas were invented,

blackness was associated with all of these really negative characteristics. Whiteness was associated with good and virtuous, good and virtuous ones. One of the things that you see happening in Africa as part of this process of dehumanisation of the black subject is the idea that these people don't actually have any history. They don't have monuments.

They don't have the written word. There's no evidence of their civilization they're uncivilized they're not fully human um africa does have huge monuments they were often um they were often accredited to being created by other people it wasn't believed they could be created by africans um it also has lots of like written languages but that's kind of regardless of that um lots of the lots of the cultures were primarily oral so my father is Yoruba which is one of the biggest kind of ethnic groups in um in Nigeria and there's a big Yoruba population in in Ireland that's one of the groups that's migrated here so the Yoruba is a primarily oral culture so there's not lots of written texts but within oral cultures there are lots of other

languages so there are so there's a drum called the bata drum yoruba as a tonal this i'm getting this is relating to hair it's just i'm just kind of giving you like some a lot of background um so uh there's a there's a drum called the bata drum as As I said, Yoruba is a tonal language. The batar drum mimics the tonality of Yoruba. So the drum speaks. It's a talking drum. So somebody that can... And how old is this? Like, how old is that, this drum?

It goes back centuries. I don't know when it dates from, but it's like a major kind of... a major facet of Yoruba culture. Do you know, you listened to the podcast i did about the history of hip-hop i did i absolutely loved it thank you i spoke about the the griots yeah is that the same type of carry on the griots the the they were talking what was it talking poets but they had a drum beat to it and this yeah you can trace rap to this. So the griots are Mende, so West Africa as well, but like Senegal, Mali, all kind of,

they traveled through a lot of West Africa, although not Nigeria. But yes, they would be part of a similar tradition. The griots are these repositories of like oral histories. Yeah. So they know lots of epic tales that are like very long and involved, like Sundiata, which is maybe comparable to like Homer

and the Odyssey. Yeah. And they know like the lineages of families and they basically have this, they have this like embodied knowledge that they've memorized that goes back hundreds and hundreds, possibly like thousands of years.

So they retain all that in their heads um so bata would be in those kind of oral traditions but it's specifically this drum but the drum speaks the drum can communicate and i think like when the british went tonight it wasn't called nigeria they invented the territory named it nigeria but when they went to this place that was going to become Nigeria, and they said, oh, these people are illiterate, and they don't have written language, the same argument could be made that they were illiterate. They couldn't decipher or decode the drum. But anyway, there are all these other languages.

Hair is one of these visual, is a visual language. And there are so many messages and there's so much information encoded into traditional um african braided hairstyles and something that i had noticed was whenever i spoke about hair um in kind of like a public in a public forum or wrote about it journalistically there'd be like so support. But there would also be people who were, like, just fucking, like, enraged. And they were just like, what is this shite? It's only hair.

And I wanted with the book to show that it's not only hair. Like, it's so much more than... It's so much more than just this matter that grows from our heads. And that it is imbued with all of this information and all of this symbolism and all of this history. So to take a group of people that were told that they had no history and that all of this mythology was created around them,

that they had no history and therefore their very humanity was in question, I wanted to look at one of their non-written forms of language and use that to tell another story, to tell African history through, specifically Nigerian, through the hair styles and talk about contemporary issues through the hair styles. And can you give a specific example? because even that sounds mad to me like you know what i mean it does like the idea that hair is being used as a form of communication and language can you give like specific examples like yeah and does that is that present in other cultures yeah so this is something that would be

like generalizable throughout the continent like throughout Africa. I just know that with Africa, people have a tendency, as I'm doing now, to just be like, oh, Africa, as though it's not this huge, huge and extremely diverse place. The mayor of Limerick was trying to be nice and said that we should have street signs in African. He was trying to be sound.

Do you know what I mean? I appreciate the effort. That was actually quite an enduring question when I was growing up. Can you speak African, Emma? And I was just like, oh, no. Which one of the thousands of languages? Even in Nigeria, there's over 150 different languages.

The thing as well with the map. Do you know that thing with the map? The way the map was drawn makes Europe look way bigger but like Africa in reality is gigantic like even Russia's actually tiny. Really? Yeah because you know the way you look at the map and you look at Russia

and you go fuck that I'm not fucking with them Russia's actually not that big it's just whatever way the map is wrapped. Russia looks huge Africa looks small and Africa's actually way bigger big. It's just whatever way the map is wrapped, Russia looks huge, Africa looks small, and Africa's actually way bigger than Russia, way bigger than Europe. Yeah, so the way Africa is represented,

that's a really good point. And you say you don't want to fuck with Russia because it looks big and threatening and imposing. So it's all ideological. A lot of this stuff isn't fact, but it's ideology and it's mythology often even though it's presented as history and it's present project presented as objective truth um so what was your question again african specific examples we say to to try and to

understand like yeah yeah hair meaning one thing like a sample of the chapter um of the first chapter of my book but there's a picture there, which is of me. See that hairstyle? I'll describe it to the audience. Yeah, please do. So, actually, I'm not going to describe African hair because I'll end up being racist. Will you do it?

Hand it to the white lad there. No, no, no, no. Who knows nothing. And describe it. I it to the white lad there. No, no, no, no. Who knows nothing. And describe it. I guarantee you won't be racist. I would like, I'd actually like to hear your description of it. It'll be fun. Okay, honestly, to me it just looks like cornrows and a bun at the end.

I mean, okay, that's not too far from the truth. Okay, so that's called shukou, and that was a hairstyle that was... Okay, so when you say cornrows, that's really interesting because a lot of the traditional Yoruba hairstyles are variations of cornrows. So the typical cornrow that most people would know that's just like running back

is called kolesi in Yoruba which means without legs because um afro hair the way afro hair curls when you um finish the braid it like by its own volition just turns into this like little curl there and that gives the name of the whole hairstyle which is without legs which is like a snail because they think that looks like a snail um so that one is shikoo and that was the hairstyle of the the king of the yoruba was called the oba he still he still is and his wives were the only people that could wear that hairstyle so that's like a queen's hairstyle and then identified them as being married to the Oba but then it just became popularized and now anyone even one such as myself okay can dare to wear it what would it have meant at the time if you were not one of the queens and you had a lash at that haircut oh god would that

have had consequences it probably would have had consequences because I know that like Yoruba society is um so like lots of African societies you look at are very like egalitarian this is the the pre-colonial ones very egalitarian very equal Yoruba isn't really one of those it's actually like very hierarchical and stratified and I think to have dared to wear the hairstyle of the queen probably wouldn't have been looked upon wouldn't have been looked upon kindly um but like yeah each each of the hairstyles just has a really specific meaning so you can tell about the person's status um you can tell their background you could maybe even know about like their aspirations like what their what their marital status you can just tell like lots of different stuff via via the hairstyles um so yeah oh another thing go on about hair is people think that like so

this whole conversation about natural hair at the moment and um all of these women including myself who stopped chemically relaxing our hair which is like a really i always find the word relaxer like so deeply misleading and a really interesting choice because it's this really innocuous gentle sounding process for some sorry innocuous gentle sounding word for something that's actually quite like a brutal process that's like really really bad for you like the chemicals in relaxer are related to like cancer and fibroids fertility problems all of this i'm not sure what relaxer is i um the one thing am i right in thinking do you know spike lee's film malcolm x i know it well do you know at the start yes he's showing malcolm and he's bleaching

his hair in the toilet and like he's relaxing hair. Is that what that is? Yeah. That's exactly what's happening. But they call it conking in that. Yeah. Because that's... So, yeah, there's different words that are used, but when men did it in that period in Harlem, when Malcolm X was coming up, it was known as conking.

But, yeah, now it is called relaxing. So it's straightening your hair, and it's like the reverse of... It's like a straight perm, like the reverse of, it's like a straight perm, like the reverse of, like a curly perm. But people in their droves have stopped doing it

like over the past 10 years because I guess that we always knew about the health risks, but I guess the pressure of assimilation was like so much that you didn't care. Like for me, I just wanted to look normal.

I just wanted to fit in. I didn't want anything that kind of like further, like othered me, like my hair. And you don't want people touching your hair. So relaxing it is a good way around it. I didn't want people touching my hair. Exactly. A form of protection.

So with all, anyway, relaxer sales have absolutely slumped. And it's gone from something that kind of most black women did to something like less than half do. But with that's been the development of the natural hair movement. Ac mae wedi mynd o rhywbeth y gwnaeth y gwleidydd gwleidydd Cymru i rhywbeth ychydig yn llai na'u bod yn ei fodlon. Ond, gyda hynny, mae wedi bod yn datblygu'r symudiad o'r hairlifau gwbl. Felly, mae'r gwleidyddion yn gwneud, yn dangos eu tegsturau gwbl. Ond o fewn hynny, mae'r syniad hwnnw,

roedd gen i unrhyw un yn gweirio, yn cwestiynu fi y diwrnod diwethaf, ac roedd hi'n dweud, ond gallwch chi ddim dweud eich bod yn gwbl, oherwydd nid yw hynny'n gwbl. Mae yna rhywfaint o gyfraniad. Mae gennych chi gyffrediniaeth, mae gennych chi bradau. Ac felly roeddwn i'n ei ddangos... Gyrff y cyfraniad. But you can't say that you're a natural because this isn't natural. There's like an intervention. You have extensions. You have braids. And so I was explaining that like... Interventionist hair. What an awful insult. Fuck off with your interventionist hair. But like, yeah, the idea that this hasn't just like grown from my head naturally.

So I was pointing out that traditionally in Africa, West Africa, the Yoruba, a woman would never have Afro hair. Like a man, you would never just have your hair out. So the idea that you're wearing, that you have an Afro is like a very, it's obviously a black hairstyle. That's the way our hairstyle grows. But it's a very like Western black response to racism. To just have an Afro is like a defiant kind of, you're telling me my hair, you're telling me my hair you're telling me that my hair texture is like it's stigmatized and it's ugly i'm gonna wear it like kind of as big and visibly as possible but that's not something you would traditionally see in africa it would always always be bright always be braided and to have it not braided was seen as like

actually the hairstyle the name for dreadlocks in yoruba is where a irun which means like insane person's hair yeah because it was like like literally because it was only somebody with like mental health issues would allow their hair to become unkempt yeah that's that was what was traditionally kind of understood um and one thing as well that I've noticed that the hair conversation has started is white Americansicans scrambling to the history books of either ireland or scandinavia to try and prove that dreadlocks come from mayo or do you know what i mean which you know i'm like isn't it you know that's a good thing you're looking at history but you're

doing it to be pricks how do you feel about some of that like yeah the idea that it's like it's like a viking hairstyle yeah and like yeah this is a load of bollocks like basically because like that's not like they don't have like when there's like a mood board and like there's some sort of photo shoot and they're going to like appropriate like a black hairstyle or do like faux locs they don't have a picture of a viking up there they have a picture of a Rasta or something. Do you know what I mean? Or somebody from the Caribbean. So yeah, that's just rubbish. Very good.

How much of, we'll say, the language of hair in Africa, how much of that made its way across to America and was preserved or was it forgotten the language hasn't remained so I will have um like a lot of people of African descent but who are from the diaspora who so we're from the Caribbean or from the for from America and

they'll have like a traditional braided hairstyle so the hairstyles were preserved but the names of them um were not lost more so like categorically like very purposefully lost because people were not allowed to speak their languages kind of like on pain of like severe punishment um so people wouldn't necessarily like have the african terms but they would still have the hairstyles and so when i tell people when i tell like when I tell somebody what their hairstyle is with the traditional Yoruba name people are often like really touched by that and really interested because that's just not something

that's something that's kind of been denied denied to them so yeah that's quite a nice exchange Is there like a movement in America where people are deliberately trying to find what did my hair mean? I don't know if they're trying to find what did my hair mean,

but they're really engaging with braided hairstyles again and creating new meaning in them. I think things are kind of... So an idea that it's like grounded in the past but i guess like creating like uh modifying it to like suit the kind of to suit the present day but actually something really fascinating to me and i hope to others that i looked at in the book was the last chapter um looks because a lot of the conversations about hair just um it's great that we're having them but they seem to just kind of go now where

it's just like don't touch my hair and the kind of politics of black hair and there's actually like a lot more that the hair can tell us so the last chapter is called i don't know what it's called um it's called ancient futures maths mapping braiding and encoding so i'm looking at the relationship between braided hairstyles and African like mathematical traditions and um and also how braided hairstyles were used as maps so there's a place called um I don't speak Spanish so this is going to be a disgusting attempt but the oh god the Palenque San Basilio is horrible, but it's something like that, an approximation of it. And it's a town in Colombia that, it's the first free town,

it's the first free settlement in the Americas. So the people there won their freedom from the Spanish in the 1600s. So not only is it the first kind of, like post-European colonialism in the New World, it's the first free town. Not only that, but it also, they were also black people,

so it's founded by escaped slaves. So they had this intelligence network that was allowing them to escape to these kind of marshy swamplands where they built this town um and there was lots of different elements to the intelligence network but something that was really central in it was again hair being like a language were these maps that were braided into people's hair so they would communicate um do you know the underground railroad yeah so it's kind of like a

comparable thing to that except rather than being secretive it's like hiding in plain sight so they would literally communicate like where they were going to meet um how many slaves how many enslaved people were going to travel that day um what direction to take all of this stuff is communicated through hairstyles and i have photographs of some of those hairstyles obviously not photographs from the 1600s yeah but um those hairstyles are still popular in this place the palenque today and it's the last place the spanish are going to be looking it is like exactly exactly um so lots of kind of ingenious um things done done it's a lot more than just than just hair. You're living in the UK and you have been living in the UK

for a good while. Yeah. And you have a son, I believe, who's in the UK education system. He is. How do you feel about how the Brits teach colonialism? No, that's a great question.

I mean, they don't teach it. Do you know what I heard of someone on Twitter? The only time the Brits talk about colonialism is when they're talking about how bad the Spanish or French were. I mean, yes.

There's often great gusto in how they talk about how brutal Belgian colonialism was. I'm just like, wow, the level of cognitive dissonance. Even there with that, because I was thinking, do you know the way corporations

are trying to co-opt social justice, right? Yeah. So even with Nike and Colin Kaepernick, but then you look at Nike's record of sweatshops and things like that and you're going, what the fuck are you doing, lads? Do you think we're thick?

But then I was thinking back to... But people don't... You the fuck are you doing lads do you think we're thick but then I was thinking back to but people don't you say what are you doing do you think we're thick people don't really seem to question it though like it's the odd fringe person questioning it but like the the most people are just like oh yeah isn't this great it's Nike they're pricks like seriously oh shit no no no no god no but like there you go i'm part of the system they were only 40 quitting heatings men but that's one of the things i hate so much about capitalism is that like it makes us all complicit in it like i know you've spoken about this as well but something i took was i talk about too like look at our phones. And the coltan.

The reason I was talking about Nike, don't buy them, is I was thinking about the way that we say corporations use now social justice to appear virtuous, to sell us more stuff. Woke. Woke. I was thinking back to, Roger

Casement was given his knighthood because he exposed what King Leopold was doing in Leopoldville at the time and the Brits gave him a knighthood for going look how bad the Belgians are they were doing the same shit do you know what I mean? It's the same thing

the British Empire were kind of walkwashing in a sense by going look at Casement the father of human rights for pointing out what the Belgians are doing the same shit that we're doing

but he's not talking about us but I guess with them there's more of like a veneer of like gentlemanliness about it

like to their to their minds they're like oh this isn't just going to I don't know yeah I mean they are much of a muchness and

for the Belgians it's like one country. Granted, the Congo is absolutely vast and the destruction and devastation they've wrought is still unfolding. That's the phones. All the minerals from the phones, it's happening in the Congo. Yeah, absolutely.

But back to the question. They don't teach it. The only reason I know what I know is because, well, obviously, growing up in Ireland, you have an awareness of colonialism. How did you feel we taught it? Do you think our education, is it too hard on the Brits? Sorry for any British people.

They can handle it. What was I going to say? So for me, it wasn't just what you learned in school. I don't really think I learned anything in school. I went to about 10 different schools. I really didn't get on well in school. But for me, I just picked it up in other ways. I grew up... So I spent the first like

four years of my life in the States and um I don't know like it's not like my mum's a real nationalistic I was in the audience so I was very careful what I say it's not like she's not nationalistic or anything but I was just really brought up like on rebel songs like I learned all of these like I just learned like loads of like who was it like like christy moore like planxie the dubliners like um so i just learned like all of these songs like the like james connelly the christy moore things i know other people sing it as well but that's the version that i know so just like this imagery in my head from like a young age, like they shot him down on a bright May morning. And I'm just like, oh God, like those bastards.

Like when he couldn't walk because he was injured from the rising and he had to be carried in and they shot him anyway. And I had all of this imagery in my mind from music. Like I really think like the power of music to influence people is just absolutely huge. So kind of beyond what I was learning in school, it was kind of in my DNA, just from the stuff that was around me. In terms of what I know about Africa, that's very specifically... To be fair, I learnt it in England, but I had a very unusual experience because I went to the School of Oriental and African Studies. Yeah. And I did African Studies. So that's why I know all of this stuff.

Like, it's not common knowledge in England at all, what the English, what Britain or England did in Africa. It's just not known. And the little bit that is known is presented as still something that's beneficial. There was a poll done recently, and it showed, I can't remember off the top of my head what the percentage was, but something like 70% of British people are proud of colonialism. So they don't actually see it.

But they don't know, are you saying they don't know what it is properly? They don't know what it is. They think it's like, they think it was kind of spreading the light of like civilization, civilisation and commerce and Christianity to the dark continent. Like the Yanks in Democracy. Oh, there you go. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. And people would be like to me, oh, so, yeah, like, where are you from?

My dad's, like, Nigerian. Oh, like, how do you talk to him? How do you talk to your grandparents? Like, what language do you use? Oh, we use English. Oh, How do you talk to your grandparents? What language do you use? We use English. Oh, why do they speak English in Nigeria? I'm like, you invented Nigeria. You gave it that name.

English is its official language. They didn't just wake up one morning and decide, oh, we're going to speak in English. We won't be able to watch TV. We better start learning this English. So yeah, the people just don't know and they're often angry when confronted with the truth

as well and how old is your young fella? he's six so what happens when he starts coming home with history books in about five years you're going to start getting angry at the books well I think like myself he's already got a firm foundation in kind foundation in radical politics.

The other day he came home from school, in his English school, he came home from school with a big, detailed picture of Kilmainham Jail. Brilliant. So, yeah. So, yeah. Do you think that... We'll say the Irish history of oppression gives us an opportunity to potentially be better than other countries

when it comes to immigrants? Now, it doesn't appear to be happening, but do you think it's... I think the potential is undoubtedly there. Yeah. It would be... I really want to see that potential come good on because it really could go another way as well.

Absolutely, yeah. So I guess it's all kind of in the balance now. It's all unfolding. I do notice, though, like a big difference between here and the UK is when I've written stuff about kind of race, racism, colonialism in Britain, there'll be loads of support,

but there'll also be like a really big backlash from a lot of like really, really, really angry white men. It's nearly always white men. And they're just raging. It's really gotten to the heart of what they believe to be true and right and something kind of deeply embedded in their identity. Whereas in Ireland, writing similar stuff, the backlash isn't the same. And I think it's

because like Irish identity isn't so built around this idea of it just it isn't built around this idea of imperialism and empire and Irish people actually yeah like have that kind of shared that shared history of colonization um so the identity is very is very different and is less defensive when talking about some of this stuff what I try and like I've got buddies now and we said the phrase cultural appropriation is enough for them to they'll roll their eyes

and they'll go oh for fuck's sake shut up and what I try and do is I remind them if someone called Brian McFadden English on Sky News, we'd be digging up the back garden looking for Semtex from 1989. And what I say to them is that, you know,

they'll hear cultural appropriation and they'll go, oh, they're triggered again. And then they're screaming at the television when an Irish sports star is called British and I'm going, that's the same fucking again. And then they're screaming at the television when an Irish sports star is called British, and I'm going, that's the same fucking shit, and one of them is way more important. And I try and use that to get them to... Like, if you can understand why it's insulting,

because that's all colonialism, why can't you then take that and go, this person who is saying cultural appropriation, just believe them, because it's not far off. Yeah, so, ooh, it's a complicated one, in that I actually, I understand... You do think Brian McFadden is British? Is he not?

I don't know, poor old Brian McFadden. Jesus Christ, he's not even low back in the West Live, I shouldn't have picked on him. I did not expect to be discussing Brian McFadden, but there you go. So, yeah, like, I actually do understand people's, I do understand people's frustration to an extent in that, you'd be like, God, this is kind of,

there's so many serious things in the world, like, why is this getting so much attention? Why is this getting so many column inches? And sometimes I do think that, and I'm like, well, I'd actually rather talk about something else as well. I've kind of said what I want to say about cultural appropriation but I have a chapter in the book that is looking at cultural appropriation I advance a new definition of cultural appropriation

because I think people are using the term they're using the term to describe lots of things that are annoying and wrong but I wouldn't actually say are cultural appropriation so for me with cultural appropriation like I don't really talk about the cultural appropriation of non-black cultures like I mi, gyda chyfrifoldeb diwylliannau, dydw i ddim yn siarad am y cyfrifoldeb diwylliannau o ddiwylliant nid-Blaith, fel pan fyddai'n ymwneud â chyfrifoldeb diwylliannau Cymraeg, diwylliannau Cymraeg, ddim yn fy ardal o arbenigedd, dydw i ddim yn gwybod, dydw i ddim yn ymrwymo i hynny. Ond yn benodol gyda diwylliannau Blaith, mae'n rhaid i chi wybod bod y cysylltiad rhwng pobl Blaith a phobl Gwlad yn rhywbeth nid goll a phobl gwbl yn rhywbeth sy'n ddi-neutr, mae popeth yn gwych ac yn gyfraith. Fel y dywedais, mae'r syniad o bobl goll yn rhywbeth a oedd wedi'i adeiladu i ddiffyg a chadw a chadw eu adnoddau.

Felly, dros y 500 mlynedd diwethaf, mae'r adnoddau o Gwled ac Cymru a phobl o Gwled a Cymru wedi'u gwthio yn eu milwyrion a'u cymryd i'r Amerigiaid, of West and Central Africa, and people from West and Central Africa stolen in their millions and taken to the Americas, their resources have been stolen, extracted, appropriated to enrich the West. There's all this labor and all of these material, cultural, spiritual resources that have not been that have been used to consolidate wealth in west in many western nations and none of that has been even properly acknowledged let let alone have has anyone been remunerated or is there anything even approaching like reparations so in that context to also see your cultural production, and if you look at black Americans,

it's cultural production that they have, that has developed in spite, like in the crucible of white supremacy, like in the face of what is happening to them there. They've created this beautiful culture that everybody in the world wants a piece of, everybody in the world wants to piece of everybody in the world wants to claim while still denigrating african-american culture as being criminal as being

as being backwards as being thuggish as being this that and the other but their culture is like like constantly like repackaged and presented as american and white American. And so many people benefit from that in untold ways, very rarely black Americans. So in that context, it is, yeah, it's infuriating. It's infuriating to see. And if you think about it specifically in hair,

if you see, it's changing a little bit now, but certainly up until five or six years ago, if I had a hairstyle like the one Colessi, which is just the typical cane rose, the way people would treat me would be very, very different. I've been accused of shoplifting, trails around stores. I've had people say, oh God, Emma, it's funny how thuggish you can look so easily. All this kind of stuff. And then Kylie, what's her name? I don't even want to say those women's names.

That family. Then they're doing it. It's like, oh, it's so bold. It's so edgy. This is like high fashion. This is something to be celebrated and to be praised. It's the same hairstyles that black people are penalized and criminalized for having. My blood's kind of boiling there.

So, yeah, no, it's a thing. Yeah, so we were frantically trying to not talk about shit we should be talking on stage. Backstage, which is a terrible thing about intervals. Tell me about Afrofuturism, please. Because it's one of those things that's on my list of things to learn about. Wow, okay.

Do you want to ask me a more specific question? Do you know what? No, because... I just know... Here's all I know about Afrofuturism. This is all I know. Are you familiar with the band

Parliament Funkadelic like so my that's my only context for it is the way that Parliament and Funkadelic used to explore themes of space

which I always thought was like Parliament Funkadelic started in the late 60s early 70s when the space race was happening

and it was their way of going well they're definitely not putting a black man on the moon soon so we can have a spaceship on stage maybe yeah yeah absolutely is that afrofuturism that is absolutely like a part of afrofuturism 100% so like as a term it is relatively recent and it was actually the term afrofuturism was coined by like a white academic called Mark Derry in don't hold me to this but like the early 90s the late 80s I think the early 90s so relatively recently but I wonder I don't know how familiar people are with the term

but it is something that I argue while we've just named it relatively recently is something that I argue, while we've just named it relatively recently, is something that has very ancient antecedents and is something that really harks back to African concepts of time. And again, I don't want to talk about Africa in this generalized way. So I will use maybe Yoruba as an example. But a lot of what I'm saying is generalisable to like other cultures as well so obviously like Afrofuturism is something that we see in popular culture now we see it in art we see it in music and there can be quite like a

kind of superficial engagement with it oh yeah it's like black people in futuristic clothing with some Egyptian iconography and maybe doing something that's a little bit out there. That's my understanding of Afrofuturism. Yeah, yeah. And that is part of it. But because my academic background is in African studies, I'm always fascinated by how these manifestations of popular culture, what they link to in the pre-colonial cultures. So the first thing that you have to think about is time.

And Afrofuturism isn't something that is only concerned with the future. It's also very much like engaged with the past. And when I say that, it's, this is kind of deep, but okay, so in Western civilization and Western society, time is imagined, because obviously time is a construct like how we engage with time um is too many degrees like a construct right so in this part of the world

where we have or in the west let's say where there's like judeo christian reality we imagine time as operating in this linear way where there's just like a beginning a middle and an end and we see that even played out in like our lives like we think we live a life and then we die and based on your beliefs maybe you go to heaven like maybe there's an afterlife but you basically live and you die and that's it it's quite final in Yoruba culture and this is generalizable to lots of African cultures there's a very different, this is traditionally, obviously lots of people have converted to Christianity and Islam, but in the traditional cultures, there's a very different engagement with time.

So time is actually understood as being like cyclical, so it repeats itself rather than it just kind of goes in this linear way and starts and finishes. And this is like born out and manifest through the spiritual belief systems. And this is like born out and manifest through the spiritual belief systems. So most African spiritual belief systems really centralize the idea of ancestral spirits. So in this part of the world, we have an idea that there's ghosts and like they're bad and they're scary and we want to like stay away from them. Definitely. We have like we We have exorcisms. The idea of being possessed is terrifying

within the Christian church, the Catholic church. Very, very different in Africa. So ancestral spirits are seen as being... So there's kind of three tiers of humanity. So there's the unborn, but they already exist. They just haven't been born yet. Then there's like us, and then there's the ancestral spirits and they kind of operate in a cycle

of like perpetual like rebirth so for instance in Yoruba culture you'll see a really popular name is like Babatunde for a boy and Yetunde for a girl the reason for this is Yetunde's mother comes again Babatunde, his father,

comes again. So if a child is born just after a grandparent, a grandfather has died and it's a boy, he might be called Babatunde. And there's this idea that the grandfather is born again in the son. Yetunde, the grandmother, is born again in the granddaughter. So ancestral spirits all the ceremonies try and rituals and the drumming try and communicate with the ancestral spirits and there's a pantheon

of these kind of saints called the Orisha who operate as humans there's the Orisha and there's a Ludomara who's like the supreme being you bring about these states of trance

through drumming and through music and dancing where the Orisha possess or mount you. So you actually want to bring about possession and you want to be in communication with your ancestral spirits. And they're not seen as sinister or scary, but they're actually seen as providing like guidance and help and advice and support. So with Afrofuturism, that kind of different engagement with time, that's why there's a chapter in the book that's called Ancient Futures.

So there's the idea of like the distinctions between past, present and future not being as solid as they're seen in kind of like Western European culture, but far more porous and far more in like communication with each other if that makes sense so that's the time thing that's happening in afrofuturism um so yeah i just want to make that distinction that it also kind of harks back a long long time ago as it's not it's not just

wholly futuristic um what else happens okay so it's it's interesting, it's a really interesting field for me because, and I think for black people to explore because it's one of those spaces, as I was talking earlier about constructions of blackness and all those like narrow stereotypes that black people are kind of imagined to conform to. Afrofuturism kind of offers this space where you can kind of engage with like the metaphysical and kind of esoteric practices and you can imagine yourself like as

otherworldly and you've got someone like sunra who's like a really like kind of key figure in afrofuturism even though he predates the term yeah um he sees, if you watch Space is the Place, it's all about black people leaving the ghettos of America and starting this new colony in space whereby everything is based on humane principles where it's just like taking black people out of the kind of, the recent history,

a liberation from the recent history. And it's like a space to negotiate just all of these ideas of the imagination and just, yeah, a more exciting space to think about blackness. When you describe that, like that view of time, right? To me, that sounds mad, right?

Because it's so different to what I've learned, you know what I mean? And it makes me think about, I read this amazing article recently, I speak a lot on my podcast about cognitive behavioural therapy, right? And there was this article that was written by, you follow her on Twitter, I can't remember her fucking name because I

can't pronounce it, but it's, she's a black psychologist and she wrote a critique of CBT saying that, we'll say, the NHS system, that will roll out cognitive behavioral therapy, this evidence-based therapy. But for somebody who could be an African immigrant, it might be completely useless because CBT is founded in these principles of rationalism that go back to western ways of thinking and this will ultimately fail someone who comes from a culture where this stuff doesn't you know they could have that concept of time yeah yeah yeah um like how how does like that's a real impact on someone's mental health if they come from a like how do you feel

about that? Or is that something you're looking into? That's not something that I would really feel qualified to talk about. But it's making me think, like a long time ago when I did my... See, that's the problem when you get a fucking academic. You only talk about what you know about and no hot takes. No, I'm definitely willing to speculate on stuff that I probably shouldn't. Speculate to fuck, it's grand.

I have a plastic bag in my head. No one's going to take it seriously. It is making me think about when I was doing my master's and I wrote my dissertation on child soldiers in Sierra Leone, how they were reintegrated back into civilian society. And I looked a little bit at how typical kind of like Western therapy was actually like failing some of these young people who had witnessed and participated in unimaginable horrors.

This was based on anecdotal research I did rather than empirical research. Let me put that out there. It's grand. We're doing hot takes here. It's fine. I have to qualify myself like this. Anyway, so there was the idea that... Oh, so, yeah, what I heard was that

when some of the people were reintegrated back into the community via traditional rituals through which they're born again, that actually worked, and they could actually, like, draw a line between what they had done, what they had done before the ritual and the subsequent person that they were.

And they could actually kind of reintegrate back into their communities. And I remember at the time, I was like interning at like a child, at a charity that worked with child soldiers. And of course, everybody that worked there was like a middle um at a charity that worked with child soldiers and of course everybody that worked there was like a middle-class white person i was the only person of african descent and i remember talking about this failure of kind of like this often failure of like traditional therapy and how

some of these rituals were like perhaps worth looking at or at least acknowledging and being really met like kind of in no uncertain terms with like this is absolutely disgraceful that you're even suggesting this like you're basically saying that they just deserve mumbo jumbo and that they they shouldn't they shouldn't have access to like the real and proper like white western way um and i remember just that attitude being like yeah just i mean it's an attitude I have encountered a lot. But this is maybe one of the first times. And being really like, just, yeah, I was just like, wow, your lack of ability to even like engage with these things.

Like you really just see them as entirely worthless. But yeah, it's, we take for granted, I think, we trace our idea of evidence and rationality. You can trace it back to one point in western history and there's other cultures that have a completely different but we it's not to be rubbish like yeah absolutely and like i like a lot of it goes back to like cartesianism and like discarding and that that that binary kind of division of the world and that has created like so many so many problems that we're still like in this part of the world we're still grappling with and contesting and actually

trying to imagine um society and life beyond those binaries because it's really difficult to try and like cram all the crazy like complexity of life into that kind of into that binary world imagined by Cartesianism. I've got a question here. It might be from a shit lord. Does Emma find racial discourse online to be American-centric? Are you getting a hot ear

again? The ear is not hot. Emma had a sudden hot ear backstage. I had an attack backstage. Unexplained attack of hot ear. And she was worried that it would spread. I had a roaring red ear. It was quite mad. But do you find that the racial discourse online

to be American-centric? Is there a difference between white Americans using AAVE, African-American vernacular, I assume, compared to white Irish people using African black British slang. I think what that person's talking about is when like sometimes Irish people, it's often a sign of virtue signalling. If they're saying something very left they'll say y'all and it's like come on now you grew up beside a ditch. Will you say ye to fuck?

Because it doesn't affect the message. You're just looking for some retweets from yanks. But I think that's... I tried to bring ye back, though, and I was like... There's nothing wrong with ye. Not that it's gone. Y'all is in car clads. Not that it's gone, but obviously, like, I'm living in England,

and I was just like, oh, God, it really frustrates me that I can use all this American language, and you all know what I'm talking about, but I use... Or youse. Yeah, exactly. But I use, like, Irish language, like, Irish English, and nobody has a fucking clue, and, like, we're just across the fucking pond from each other. Like, so that actually really, really, that really frustrates me. And, yeah, I think there is a really American-centric kind of emphasis, and I think we should there is a really American centric um kind of emphasis and I think we should challenge it rather than just like it's not the same situation it's

not the same history um I I would be a big advocate for actually like developing kind of like Irish responses to stuff just because we have a totally different kind of culture as well absolutely and a lot of like the self-help kind of language that operates in a lot of activist space spaces has self-help self-helpy kind of sounding language i think to me is very american and it doesn't really like it doesn't really like even sit that well with me like i'd rather something more yeah i don't know more more culturally recognizable as irish absolutely um is Dabiri aware of the recent resurgence of interest

in Nigerian disco boogie from the 70s and 80s and if so what are some of her go-to gems that was a hit so I think

he's probably talking about people like William Oni oh William Oni oh yeah so yeah why do people love him So I think he's probably talking about people like William Oni. Oh, William Manabayor. That fella. Oh, yeah. So yeah, white people love him. And he's definitely been championed by white crate diggers and musos. I mean, yeah.

Yeah, I'm aware of it. I mean, yeah. Yeah, I'm aware of it, but there's a lot of music coming out of Nigeria now that young Nigerian and black people are listening to, and I'd listen to a lot more of that than I would to that kind of thing. What is it with white people liking black music that black people don't like anymore?

What's that about? Okay, I actually love that question um so like black cultural production is like often like it's incredibly like syncretic and i think the reason that so many like black diaspora genres of music have this like global appeal and like every like everybody's into them is because like there's just there's so much there's so much innovation and there's so much like fusing together of like whatever new influences people are coming into contact with they're putting all that together and they're making something new and i think there's an imperative like in like uh white cultures if i can use that term for more of an idea of like purity okay and being like oh we have to like do this like i don't know the same dynamism and innovation just doesn't like

immediacy just doesn't like seem to be there and this is something that is as old as like as old as the history of america i just finished like uh billy holidays uh autobiography which has just been republished and i would urge everyone to read it's fucking amazing, Lady Sings the Blues and she is in the 1920s talking about exactly the same thing, she's like you go uptown and all these white guys are like yeah, swing and she's just like

up in Harlem you could have heard swing 20 years ago they've actually moved on to some next thing you're just now kind of hopping onto it now and acting like it's this breaking it's just a new thing so it's usually like 10 years after something has stopped being relevant to black audiences white people will get into it it's the thing look if you see a fucking argument online like if people are arguing for oh i don't like this i like old school hip-hop exactly it's always a white lad like exactly it's

it's so true and well another thing I want to say about that is like also it's like the thing when the new black thing

is coming out it will nine times out of ten be dismissed as cheesy oh absolutely it's always like oh looking down your mumble rap or nine

exactly like mumble rap like that that's what a shitty term what a shitty term and What a shitty term. And I just feel like with trap, there's so much resonance between trap and the blues. Like trap is like the modern incarnation of the blues.

It's the same kind of themes. It's the same kind of people, same socioeconomic background. But yeah, because the blues is old, it's held in this like high esteem and trap is dismissed as trash. Do you want to hear my hot take on trap music? So trap,

what distinguishes it is that really really distorted bass, right? And it comes from Atlanta and, no, Miami first from Miami bass and then up to Atlanta. It's from, there was lads in the 90s who used to get the license plates on their cars right and they would deliberately loosen the license plate so that when

the bass was playing in the car would make this kind of shitty noise and the trap bass comes from that loosening license plates on a car with a loud bass yeah hang on I look just, I hope the answer is it didn't arrive to me in a dream. But I either read it somewhere, I had a drunken conversation with someone somewhere, but it arrived in my head and I think it's true. I'm usually right with this shit. I'm usually right. I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued. I'll look into it further. E-Art. So I'm going to cut intrigued I'll look into it further Eart

so I'm going to cut the interview short there we spoke for about another hour there was audience questions all that carry on

but just in the interest of brevity I'll keep it to about an hour it was an absolute pleasure best of luck to Emma go out and get that book Don't Touch My Hair

it's absolutely fascinating um and i'll see you next week all right look after yourselves enjoy the weather be nice to yourself be nice to your neighbors everything will be grand Thank you. so so rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play.

Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at TorontoRock.com.